Philanthropy in the Changing World - A Changing Attitude to Giving? (Paperback)

Vladimir Hyanek, Marie Hladk, Marie Hladka

Research Paper from the year 2010 in the subject Economics - Other,
grade: -, Masyryk University (Centre for Nonprofit Sector
Research), language: English, abstract: The topic of philanthropy
has been receiving attention internationally for several decades.
Like other areas of non-profit studies, charitable giving and
volunteering are attracting more and more attention from
researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, including economics.
Even though philanthropy tends to be considered a sociological
theme rather than an economic one, it poses a number of questions
that challenge economists as well. Among others we chose the
following: How can economists contribute to the theories related to
philanthropy? Can we consider voluntary giving a demonstration of
generosity rather than a market-based solution? Firstly, we intend
to examine the terms that are used in the theory of public
economics and to use them to examine the issues of philanthropy.
They are as follows: the Samaritan's Dilemma; the Prisoner's
Dilemma; or the Free-rider Problem, which we consider to be
interesting and inspiring (Stone 2008). Next, we will try to answer
the second question by means of sociological theory. The economists
who investigate philanthropy are repeatedly faced with the obvious
fact that it does not involve any buying and/or selling; it is not
a marketplace operation. We have to look for, and identify, social
values of donors and volunteers rather than economic values because
the economists are not fully able to explain empathy, altruism and
helpful behaviour using traditional economic principles (Rutherford
2008). The theoretical frame should be filled by relevant empirical
data. There is, however, a lack of both theoretical and empirical
work in this area in the Czech Republic. At the moment, we don't
have relevant information about trends or people's motivations. We
can only speculate people's behaviour from some ad hoc research or
a one-off survey that was made eighteen y